• Judith Weir
  • Piano Trio Two (2004)

  • Chester Music Ltd (World)

Spitalfields Festival

  • pf/vn.vc
  • 15 min

Programme Note

1.How Grass and Trees Become Enlightened
2.Your Light may go Out
3.Open your own Treasure House

The three movement titles of this Piano Trio are taken from a collection of Zen stories; very short anecdotes which resonate in the memory but do not reveal their secrets easily.

'How Grass and Trees become Enlightened' presents a series of extreme contrasts between high and low, loud and soft. The musical material is one of my own original songs, written to an African text, which in this version has started to sprout energetic vegetation.

In 'Your Light may go Out', the violin and cello, very closely intertwined, begin by presenting a dark musical line imprinted with the ghostly image of an English folk tune. The piano, playing chords, adds ever-increasing illumination to the music, until the end, where darkness and brightness meet.

'Open Your own Treasure House' is a joyous dance, built on a scale pattern of my own invention; an imaginary raga, perhaps.

Piano Trio was commissioned for the 2004 Spitalfields Festival by George Law, in celebration of his 75th birthday. It was first performed by the Florestan Trio.

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